Fort Hood Officials Report Mass Shooting On Base

From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Robert Siegel in Washington.

MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:

And I'm Melissa Block in Dallas. Late this afternoon there was a shooting at Fort Hood military base here in Texas. One person is confirmed dead and 14 injured. Fort Hood is in Killeen, Texas. It's about two and a half hours from where we are here in Dallas. And it was the scene of a shooting rampage back in 2009, in which 13 people were killed, another 30 injured.

NPR's Pentagon correspondent Tom Bowman joins me now and Tom, what have you heard? What's the latest?

TOM BOWMAN, BYLINE: Well, Melissa, it's still a developing story. Fort Hood has released a statement with an initial report that a shooter is dead, but they say that this is unconfirmed. And a U.S. official told me that there are 14 wounded and they've been taken to area hospitals. But the officials said the number of wounded will probably change several more times over the night, and the base is still on lockdown.

BLOCK: And any indication of the condition of those wounded?

BOWMAN: We have no report on that. Just 14 wounded.

BLOCK: Oh, OK. Any more detail on the gunman? Earlier there were reports that there may have been more than one gunman. What do you know about that?

BOWMAN: Right. Well, that's why this statement from Fort Hood, the initial report, that a shooter is dead. So there have been reports of more than one shooter, but at this point we still have no official information about that.

BLOCK: Well, I should mention that President Obama travelling in Chicago spoke about the situation. He said, we are following it closely. The situation is fluid right now. We're heartbroken that something like this might have happened again. And by again, he's referring to that 2009 shooting that I mentioned, Tom, where 13 people were killed, the deadliest shooting ever at a military installation in this country.

BOWMAN: That's right. And that was a - the shooter was a U.S. Army major and psychiatrist named Nadal Hasan. Again, he killed 13 people and injured more than 30 others. And just last summer he was convicted, found guilty of 13 counts of premeditated murder and was sentenced to death.

BLOCK: Tom, let's talk just a little bit about Fort Hood. I've spent time there and it is vast, 340 square miles.

BOWMAN: Oh, it is huge. And it's home to the First Cavalry Division. It's, I believe, the largest Army base in the country. 40-, 50,000 people there. Soldiers and their families there, a lot of children. You're right. It's a huge, sprawling base down in Texas.